Opening: Friday, February 17, doors open at 6pm. RSVP here.
A World to Win work celebrates the many historical advancements of the international working class and ferociously proposes a new world. Ian Matchett and Rivka Valérie Louissaint’s oil paintings and mixed-media collage highlight leaders of the past and present and rally visions of working-class unity, power, and the future.
Part of The People’s Forum’s celebration of Red Books Day, the exhibition brings together visual art, history, theory, and struggle as part of an international observance of left books, their authors, and the people’s movements they ushered forward.
In celebration of the great contributions internationalist movements have made in the development of the working-class struggle, and in recognition of the need to build unity and grow our movements, this exhibition fuels our current moment.
Artist Bios:
Ian Matchett is a queer socialist midwestern painter. He was raised in West Michigan, and attended UM Ann Arbor, receiving degrees in Political Science and Studio Art in 2014. Since graduating he has lived in Detroit, helping found The Brick and Mortar Collective and The Michigan Student Power Network, and in 2021 was named Director of Swords into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery. His work is focused on the use of history, art, and memory as tools for social change. He has shown and sold work both locally and nationally.
Rivka Valérie Louissaint also known as Kakou (Kah-koo), is an Haitian cultural worker currently based in Oakland CA. Their practice includes mixed media visual work, writing, performance arts, as well as being an educator and a community organizer. Louissaint is an MFA graduate of the UC Berkeley Art Practice Department, class of 2022 and is a 2022-23 Gerardo Marín Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of San Francisco, CA where they teach a Drawing for Non-Major course.
Louissaint’s work has been exhibited at BAMPFA, Berkeley; SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn;the New York Academy of Art, New York; the Oliver Art Center, Oakland; and the Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They were a recipient of the Murphy Cadogan Award in 2021, and one of the 2022 AXA Art Prize finalists.
Red Books Day is a month-long and international celebration of progressive literature and rational thought, celebrated on (or around) February 21, the publication day of the Communist Manifesto. We invite you to join us for art, music and collective learning:
